Thursday, March 24, 2011

Honeycreepers of Trinidad and Tobago - so colorful and adorable!

Purple Honeycreeper (male)

Purple Honeycreeper (female)

Red-legged Honeycreeper(female)

Red-legged Honeycreeper(male)

Green Honeycreeper (male)

Green Honeycreeper (female)

We were very anxious to see the Honeycreepers on our trip, especially the red-legged ones. As it turned out, the star of the Honeycreeper show for us was the female Purple Honeycreeper. Almost always in the bird world, the female is quite drab in comparison to the male. Well, not these little darlings! The females were decked out in at least three shades of green and had some seriously fancy breast striping plus a pretty peach neck and eye area. Chris even commented that she herself would never have the guts to wear all those shades of green in one outfit. It just seemed like the females had the personalities to match their colors too as they darted boldly about with all the males.

A male red-legged honeycreeper made only one brief appearance at the feeders at Asa Wright, but we were able to see one again out on one of our rainforest walks. It almost seemed like cheating when we watched all the Honeycreepers coming to the nectar feeders and flowers near the center, so it was more fun in a way to find them out in the trees. And, boy, do they pop with color when they're amongst all those big deep green rainforest trees.

We ended up with a funny little ritual thanks to the Honeycreepers. Anyone who knows us understands that Mike can be sort of distracted sometimes. If you don't know us, think absent-minded professor type. When traveling, that can make it hard to remember which color toothbrush Chris packed for him. This trip we had one purple and one green toothbrush with us, and Chris used the purple one first. So when Mike asked which was his, it was the green. Anytime Mike needed a reminder which color brush was his, we just said "opposite of the honeycreepers," i.e., purple for her and green for him. If Chris had given it any forethought, she might have chosen the green first - then we would have been just like the Honeycreepers instead of the opposite. Obviously the Honeycreepers put us in a pleasant and silly state of mind.